The itch.io Bundle for Ukraine ended yesterday with over six million dollars split between two charities for the people of Ukraine. Humble Bundle now has a similar bundle called Stand With Ukraine going on with a $40 minimum for 123 different items like the recently released co-op Back 4 Blood and Satisfactory.
The Humble Stand with Ukraine bundle has already raised over three million dollars for four charities benefitting the Ukrainian people and it ends in about 6 days. Check it out at this link.
MacOS has changed in the past few major versions to start requiring that applications be signed and notarized in order for them to launch at all. Mac Source Ports’ developer Tom Kidd noticed that some source ports for games weren’t updated to pass through Apple’s system and put together a project to provide signed and notarized builds of these source ports for modern Macs running Intel processors and Apple’s M1 system on a chip lineup so that the games aren’t lost to time.
There are already over 40 games on Mac Source Ports from more than 20 source ports, I recommended checking it out if you’re on a Mac and looking for classic games to play.
I played a few of the games in the itch.io Bundle for Ukraine recently and you can watch the replay of the stream on YouTube. There are over 900 games in the bundle and this is the first group that stood out to me, can’t wait to check out more. Let me know your suggestions in the comments below.
Sophie’s Safecracking Simulator is a cracking good sim but not one I’d recommend playing for the first time on a stream unless you’re already familiar with safecracking. Runs on macOS, Windows, and Linux.
Combo Postage is a fun arcadey stacking and combo-clearing game. Only for Windows and Linux.
Kaiju Big Battel Fighto Fantasy has a questionable name but seems perfectly harmless and extremely on-brand for someone who goes by Nuclear Monster. Windows, macOS, Linux, Android.
Antecrypt is an incredibly well put together retro single-stick arena shooter. Didn’t even know there was such a category before. Only on Windows.
Dumpy & Bumpy is a puzzle adventure that’s similar in spirit to puzzle bobble. Windows only.
SkateBird is a good Hawk-like skating game. Windows, macOS, Linux.
Pullfrog is a challenging Tetris-like puzzler where you control a cute frog at the bottom of a well, trying to guide the pieces into the correct spot to clear a line. Windows, macOS, Linux, and can even be played inside Pico 8!
Ryan “icculus” Gordon is building what he calls a simple media player with SDL in C over a series of videos, embedded above. It’s fun to watch smart people demonstrate how to solve problems and the description for each video links to a blob of code changes that Gordon makes over the course of the video.
The people working on Valve’s Steam Deck had a lot of complicated hardware and software hurdles to overcome in order for it to just be a functional handheld gaming computer. My guess is that the biggest hurdle after everything else is probably Valve’s WINE-fork, Proton. Fortunately, Valve can continue to update Proton after the Steam Deck was released. Unfortunately, I don’t think they will undo the damage they’ve caused to the people who were porting games to Linux natively for two decades. Windows compatibility layers like Proton will also never provide perfectly accurate Windows operating system compatibility and it’s gotten to the point where Bungie is threatening to ban users who try to play Destiny 2 through Proton. That’s not entirely unreasonable from their perspective running a multiplayer game, but it stinks for Destiny 2 players.
